


Kristy's Worst Fear

by tornyourdress



Category: Baby-Sitters Club - Martin
Genre: F/F, yuletide2007
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-24
Updated: 2009-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-05 03:59:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/37584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tornyourdress/pseuds/tornyourdress
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Coming out to everyone else is fine; it's Mary Anne's reaction that Kristy is worried about.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kristy's Worst Fear

The hardest part about the whole thing was telling Mary Anne. I mean, I was so nervous I could hardly sleep the night before, and if you know me, you'd know that's a pretty big deal. I don't get nervous about much. Mary Anne does – she's a worrier, and has been for as long as I've known her, which is a really long time – but me? No way.

'Me' is Kristin Amanda Thomas, but everyone calls me Kristy, except my mom when she's really mad at me. I'm fifteen, small for my age, and usually found in jeans. Sometimes I wear skirts, but usually only because my friends have pestered me into it for a dance or something. I used to have a bunch of really close friends – we had a babysitting club, really more of a business actually – but I guess we've kind of grown apart since high school started.

The club was my idea. I'm one of those people who get ideas anywhere – in the shower, walking down the street, wherever – and then put them into action. I've always been proud of this. I think it's a good characteristic to have. But since I turned fifteen I've been a little more cautious about telling people that. I guess because on my fifteenth birthday I realized that, even though I'm smart in some ways, like with businesses and ideas and knowing what to do with a bored or upset kid, I'm really dumb in others.

I had a party, and a bunch of kids from school came, and Alan Gray tried to kiss me. It wasn't the first time he'd tried to kiss me. Alan Gray is this guy from school who's always sort of liked me, I guess, even though for most of my life I just found him annoying. He's a total pest. Anyway, he tried to kiss me, and in the background I could see Stacey McGill, who's one of those girls who used to be a really close friend and now I just eat with her at lunch sometimes and see her at parties, and I thought: _ohmygod, I would rather kiss, like, Stacey right now_.

And then I froze up and jumped away because I realized it was actually true. Not that I wanted to kiss Stacey, or anything. I didn't. Stacey is gorgeous – blonde curly hair, flawless skin, amazingly stylish clothes – but she's way too put-together. I happen to know from slumber parties that she's naturally beautiful, but I also know that she's one of those girls who gets up an hour earlier than she needs to so that she can pick out her outfit and do her makeup for school.

I hardly ever wear makeup and the thought of spending that much time and effort on making myself look pretty is just ridiculous. I'm not stunning the way Stacey is but I'm not bad-looking. And I wouldn't even know what to do with mascara or anything like that. So I don't bother.

But what I did realize was that, even though I didn't want to kiss Stacey specifically, it was true. In a really big way. That I didn't want to kiss Alan because he was, well, _Alan Gray_, ew, but also because he was a boy.

I used to have this sort-of boyfriend called Bart, and he liked me and I didn't like him, and I always thought it was because I wasn't _ready_ to like a boy that way. I was okay with being immature about boy-stuff because I was mature about other stuff, like school or babysitting. Stuff that actually mattered.

It occurred to me that day that actually it wasn't about not being ready. That maybe I was _never_ going to like a boy that way.

And then a few days later I knew I was going to have to start telling people. I'm not a big secret-keeper. I'm a terrible secret-keeper, actually. I can organize surprise parties but the only way I can make sure not to let it accidentally all spill out to the person who's supposed to be surprised is to keep myself busy with the organizing. I guess I just like to say what's on my mind.

Mom and Watson – he's my stepdad – were totally cool with it. My older brothers, Charlie and Sam, were not surprised. When I thought about it I wasn't surprised that they weren't surprised. I mean, I do spend a lot of time a) doing sports and b) having sleepovers with my best (female) friends. Now you see what I meant about being really dumb in some ways, huh?

I have four younger siblings – David Michael, Karen, Andrew, and Emily Michelle – and they got really worried because it was this big announcement and Mom and Watson looked so serious at first, and then it was all okay and Karen asked a lot of questions and David Michael shrugged and we had ice-cream. I guess maybe it was a little awkward, but it was okay. I didn't get nervous about it.

Telling Mary Anne? That was something I got really, really nervous about.

***

I kept tossing and turning and fixing my pillow. The clock next to my bed was counting down the hours until I saw Mary Anne. She was coming over at nine-thirty and then Sam was going to drive us to the mall where we would buy stuff for school.

Tenth grade started in just over a week. I was looking forward to it. New classes, a new routine, new team lineups, new projects. I was also a little scared, because I'd decided I was going to be Out. I wasn't going to talk about how gross boys were, or how I didn't like them yet. I was going to say that I liked girls, actually, and I was going to beat up Alan Gray if he made any stupid comments, and even though it was a kind of scary idea, I was also sort of looking forward to that, too.

Like I said, I like to say what's on my mind, and if this was on my mind, if I'd finally figured this all out, then people were going to hear about it.

But _people_ were one thing. That was different from Mary Anne. Mary Anne Spier and I had known each other for a really long time, and in some ways we were similar and in other ways we were very different. For starters, she _loved_ boys. She was the first one out of all our friends, even Stacey, to have a serious boyfriend. She was also, even though she probably didn't like to think of herself like that, really like her father, who'd raised her. Richard Spier was very conservative and very uptight and just the sort of person who would _not_ like his daughter's best friend being a lesbian.

I was scared that Mary Anne, even though she was sensitive and kind and my best friend in the world, would agree that we shouldn't be friends anymore. I was scared that she'd say that she couldn't be friends with _someone like me_. She'd probably be nice about it, but the message would come through loud and clear. This wasn't something I could boss her into. There was a very real chance that by this time tomorrow I wouldn't have a best friend anymore.

No wonder I couldn't sleep.

***

Mary Anne arrived on time, which is a trait I admire in people. I was the one who was late, for once. I'd overslept and I was still looking for my socks when she came into my room.

"Karen let me in," she said. We had Karen and Andrew, who are Watson's kids from his first marriage, for another two days before they went back to their mom's house. "Need some help?"

"Socks," I explained, looking in my sock drawer. Only, because I am a messy person, and because my mom has more important things to do than clean my room or do all my laundry, there were no clean socks in my sock drawer. Actually, there were no socks in my sock drawer, just jeans and hats.

Mary Anne opened up the top drawer, which was supposed to be where I kept t-shirts and underwear, and pulled out a pair of socks. She tossed them to me, and I had to lunge right to actually catch them. Mary Anne is not exactly what you would call a star athlete, even if it's only throwing something across a room.

"I have something to tell you," I said in a rush, still holding the socks.

"Okay," she said, and waited patiently. That's the thing about Mary Anne – she never pushes anyone. I knew that if I needed to, she'd let me take all day to say what I needed to say.

"I. Um." I stared at the socks. I had run though this all in my head, all night long. It was just so hard now that Mary Anne was right here. "This is really hard," I said.

"Kristy, are you okay?" She sounded worried, and I thought I was going to cry, which was ridiculous. I never cry. Well, hardly ever. Mary Anne bursts into floods of tears over everything and we always used to say when we were younger that she did enough crying for both of us.

"Ilikegirls."

"What?"

"I like girls. Um. That way." I scrunched the socks up in my hands and looked at the floor.

"What way?" Mary Anne asked. I couldn't tell if she genuinely didn't get it or if she just wanted to hear me say it. Or if she just didn't believe it.

"Like – the way you liked Logan. _That_ way."

"I haven't liked Logan in over a year," she said.

"That's not the point, you know what I mean," I said, and then I had another realization. Mary Anne hadn't liked anyone since Logan. Not that she'd told me about, and she would have told me. All this time I'd been thinking of Mary Anne as the exact opposite of me when it came to liking boys.

I looked at her, watched the way she pushed her hair behind her ears and fiddled with the pendant I'd given her for her fourteenth birthday, nearly a year ago.

"What?" she said, blushing.

"Nothing," I said. "You know what I mean, though. Right?"

"Right." She was still blushing.

"And we're still friends?" I had to check.

That was where the waterworks started. "Of course we're still friends," she sniffled, flinging herself across the room to hug me. "Best friends. Friends forever."

"You don't have to get _mushy_," I said.

And then she was hugging me and I was hugging her and we stayed like that for a really long time. Which I guess was mushy. Or maybe more than mushy, if you know what I mean. To tell you the truth I couldn't even begin thinking about _that_. I was just so relieved. I mean, Mary Anne Spier has been my best friend for as long as I can remember.

Whatever happened, I was pretty glad that my best friend was going to be there too.


End file.
